Fish Weir, Bush Island, Co. Clare

Co. Clare |

Water Management

Fish Weir, Bush Island, Co. Clare

On the upper foreshore of the Shannon estuary, just northwest of Bush Island in County Clare, a row of posts crosses a tidal creek in a near-perfect north-south line.

Forty metres long and braced along its western side, it is not a pier or a boundary marker but a fish weir, a post-medieval structure designed to trap fish as the tide retreated. The technique is ancient and practical: uprights driven into the mud or sand would support wicker panels or netting, funnelling fish into a confined space where they could be collected by hand or with baskets. What makes this one quietly compelling is how little it announces itself. It sits in the foreshore mud, oriented against the creek, doing what it was built to do, or rather bearing the outline of that purpose long after the posts stopped catching anything.

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Pete F
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